"P4 adds two additional cameras to improve situational awareness on the sides and two new imaging sensors―one facing forward and one pointed to the rear―specifically designed for autonomous vehicles. The imaging sensors feature new chip technology with high dynamic range. The LIDAR sensing system with eight scanning heads carries over from the previous test model, Platform 3.0, and morphs into the new vehicle design."

PRNewswire: Ouster announced its 128-beam flash lidar sensor, the OS-1-128. The OS-1-128 is said to be the highest resolution lidar on the market and comes with no change in size, mass, power consumption, or ruggedness compared to the OS-1-64. The OS-1-128 has a 45° vertical FOV, the widest available of any commercially sold high-performance lidar sensor. It has 0.35° vertical angular resolution.

The OS-1-128 is priced at $18,000, six times cheaper than the competing 128-channel lidar sensor. Ouster expects the OS-1-128 to be available for volume purchases in the summer of 2019.

"Ouster continues to push the frontier of what is possible in lidar; our multi-beam flash lidar architecture gives us the ability to constantly improve our performance while keeping prices low, reliability high, minimizing the sensor's size, weight and power consumption, and producing at volume. In a market where all of these metrics matter and under-delivering on even one of them is a dealbreaker, Ouster continues to provide performance without compromise," said Ouster CEO Angus Pacala.

PRNewswire: Sense Photonics, a startup building high-performance flash LiDAR, is partnering with Infineon. Sense Photonics' core technology – protected by over 200 patents – is said to enable a high-performance, solid state system, with no moving parts with performance, reliability and cost required for automotive and industrial automation applications.

"We are excited that our technology is capable of delivering high resolution, long-range flash LiDAR in a compact and energy efficient package," said Scott Burroughs, co-founder and CEO of Sense Photonics. "For customers pushing the limits in AI and machine learning, the 3D sensor is their view of the world, so point cloud quality and density is essential for exceptional product performance."

Thomas-PR: RoboSense, a CES 2019 Innovation Award Honoree, will publicly demonstrate at CES its new RS-LiDAR-M1 with patented MEMS technology that supports Level 5 driverless automated driving. A breakthrough on the measurement range limit based on 905nm LiDAR with a detection distance to 200 meters

A major step forward from the previous version RoboSense RS-LiDAR-M1Pre, the new RS-LiDAR-M1 MEMS optomechanical LiDAR provides an increased horizontal FOV by nearly 100%, reaching an amazing 120° FOV, so that only a few RS-LiDAR-M1s are needed to cover the 360° field of view. With only five RS-LiDAR-M1s, there is no blind zone around the car with dual LiDAR sensing redundancy provided in front of the car for a L5 level of automatic driving -- full driverless driving. Based on the target production cost at $200 each, the cost of five RS-LiDAR-M1 is only 1/100th the highest mechanical LiDAR available to the market, which is more in line with the cost requirements for the mass production of autonomous vehicles.

The battle between 1550nm and 905nm LiDAR is about cost and performance. A low-cost 905nm RS-LiDAR-M1 is said to achieve a breakthrough on the measurement range limit based on the 905nm LiDAR, with a detection distance to 200 meters.

“The RoboSense RS-LiDAR-M1 LiDAR system is a giant leap forward for driverless technology,” said Mark Qiu, Co-founder, RoboSense.“We are committed to developing high-performance automotive-grade LiDAR at a low-cost to advance the LiDAR market, so that LiDAR can be used in fully unmanned vehicles, as well as assisted autonomous driving with superior environmental information detection that ensures driving safety.”

BusinessWire: Velodyne unveils the VelaDome, a compact embeddable lidar that provides an ultra-wide 180° x 180° image for near-object avoidance. Powered by Velodyne’s Micro Lidar Array (MLA) technology, the VelaDome is optimized for manufacturability and designed to meet automotive-grade standards.

BusinessWire, VentureBeat: Australian Lidar startup Baraja raises $32m in a series A round led by Sequoia China and Main Sequence Ventures’ CSIRO Innovation Fund, with participation from Blackbird Ventures. The company Spectrum-Scan lidar uses refraction in prisms to scan the scene with no mechanical moving parts. The startup only emerged from stealth in July 2018, and to date it had raised around $1.5m in seed funding.